


Aftershock

by down



Category: Magic Knight Rayearth
Genre: Clef is a sub, F/M, Post canon, Umi finally gets her way, everyone is grown up, what even is this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-19
Updated: 2012-11-19
Packaged: 2017-11-19 00:54:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/567215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/down/pseuds/down
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, Clef needs to let go of his control for a while. (Sometimes he needs someone to hand it to.)</p><p>(alternately: Clef is a sub, Umi is a biter, they never manage to get to a bed...) (...and I should never summarise things at three in the morning with Milieva being a bad influence but I still can't think of anything more accurate which probably says everything there is to know about this?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftershock

**Author's Note:**

> Uh, submission-themed smut? Because apparently I have headcanoned myself into the firm belief that Clef leans that way and that also it would do him good to have someone he trusts to get him to relax I DON’T KNOW WHAT I HAVE WRITTEN HERE *flails hands about* I CAN’T WRITE SMUT ANYWAY. And Milieva was encouraging me so this is at least PARTIALLY her fault? *grins*
> 
> (also this is several years after canon and BOTH of them have grown up for reasons? XD)
> 
> Possible triggers: depression, insomnia, the submissive stuff, earthquake but no one dies, details in endnotes if you want them?

oOo

Clef was torn from his sleep by the shaking of the world about him. 

“Not _again!_ ” He hissed, and flung himself out of bed, throwing an arm out to catch his staff as he called it across the room. There was so little time, always so little time – the pole smacked into his hand and he wrapped stinging fingers about it, called through it down into Cephiro, searching for the instability, for the cracks making the castle shudder. His awareness flew down into the ground dashed towards the disturbance, sliding through the massive waves of pressure with skill born of practise he didn’t want to have. There – on the northern coast, a fishing village-

Even as he reached out, half the fractured area shivered and was suddenly gone, taking with it houses and creatures and people alike. Horror poured out from those left, weakening further the ground around it. Clef grit his teeth, and flung power into the land, and reached out to grab those souls as they fell into the void beyond. 

He would _not_ lose anyone else, not tonight. 

The crash of his bedroom door slamming open announced the arrival of the knights, staying the night again. They, like he, had been here before - too many times. He no longer had to ask them for help, they knew exactly what to do. 

Umi was fastest to his side, as usual. Focused on holding hard as he could the people in the dark, to ground buckling below the fears of the people upon it, he barely noticed her hands laying over his on the staff. She chased his power out to the fractured site, Fuu and Hikaru joining her as they grew close enough to grab on as well, and between them they pulled those lost people back to where the land still stood. The four of them, together, then turned to Cephiro herself, and forced the land back into quiet existence. 

When he was finally free to open his eyes and look up, they were all four of them pale and sweating, and Lantis was waiting in the door. “Guru, Knights. LaFarga is organising the guards into a relief force with food and medicine.” 

“It’s a village on the northern coast. We were able to save half of it.” Umi reported, an arm about Hikaru’s shoulders and her eyes on Fuu. “Half the land – and all of the people. It was a local problem this time. We’ll be down in a few minutes. Clef?” 

“Yes. I’m going too.” He said, and put the staff down to shake some feeling back into his fingers. Umi looked like she wanted to say something, but there was no time to argue – they’d learnt that the sooner survivors had the reassurance of aid, the less likely aftershocks were. Seeing the three knights and the Master Mage was a good part of that – they were all recognisable as figures with authority. In a crisis, any authority would do, especially if one could be angry at it. 

He stared her down. Umi sighed, then turned to follow Hikaru’s determined striding out of the room. 

oOo

It took a day to fully stabilise the land, to set up temporary shelters for all those whose homes had vanished, and Clef spent most of it holding onto his emotions only with the knowledge that anything other than a composed face would upset people further, and might be one of the tiny grains piling on which broke the balance of their belief again, and took another part of Cephiro with them. Seeing the land broken and battered, seeing the demons being born as people’s fears gathered, it was as if nothing had improved at all. As if Emeraude had gone, and taken with her Cephiro’s stability. 

It was night by the time they straggled back to the castle, and people dispersed with grim weariness to wash away the dirt caking boots and hands, then fall into bed. Clef stormed into his office and flung his staff aside, listened to it clatter onto the window seat as he rested clenched fists on the edge of his overflowing desk and bowed his head a moment. 

The door opened again behind him. 

No prizes for guessing who was foolhardy enough to follow him in after today, even before Umi spoke. “Clef – it’s getting better.” 

He snorted, and didn’t move. 

“No, it _is_. We lost a bare mile of land, and everyone survived! There were no casualties after the quake, either, no aftershocks – things are getting better, they are. So, _please_ , don’t do this tonight.” He heard her step closer, warily. 

“I can’t stand this anymore, Umi.” He said, and she stopped. “I can’t _lose_ any more. Not people – it was close tonight, again, far too close – and no more of Cephiro! The answer has to be here somewhere! In all this writing on the pillar system, there _have_ to be extra safeguards we can use, and I _need to find them!_ ” 

“You need to _rest!_ ” Umi took the last three steps in a rush and dragged him around to face her. She was as worn-looking as he, clothes stained from travel, her face smudged with dirt and her hands decorated with a dozen shallow cuts from helping clear debris where buildings had shaken down even on the land which still remained. She glared. “If you’re exhausted you’ll react slower the next time-“ 

“If I’d not been asleep, I might have reacted quickly enough to stop the _last_ time before it happened.” He said, meaning to be sharp, instead sounding bleak. Her anger faltered back into worry, and he looked away, would have stepped back if there was room but she was holding his arms, and his desk pressed into the backs of his legs. 

“You saved dozens of people.” 

He shook his head. “I just clung on long enough for you three to save them. A minute more, and I’d have started to lose them – I couldn’t pull them back, not alone. Most of the survivors lost their homes. We can rebuild houses, but we can’t replace all their belongings, or the farmland they’ve worked to cultivate.” 

“You can’t do this, Clef. Can’t take the blame all on yourself like this.” She insisted, taking a half step in to look him in the eyes – but he wouldn’t turn back to her. “You’re hurting yourself, and it’s not doing anyone good. No one blames you.” She took a deep breath. “If anything, they blame us. We’re the ones who dissolved the pillar system, after all. The reason it isn’t stable now.” 

He looked back at that, and was trapped in her gaze. “Umi, you know it’s not-“ 

“It is our fault. But it also had to be done.” Conviction shone in her voice, the conviction he was trying so hard to hold on to, and he was jealous of her certainty for a moment. 

“It was stable enough until we started trying to develop Cephiro further. I was behind that.” Clef pointed out. 

Umi rolled her eyes. “Which had to be done because there were three times as many people as the land available could have supported! There was a _vote_ , Clef! Every adult in the land chose!” 

“I-“ He bit his lip and tried to look away again as the sorrow in his chest threatened to expand and swallow him down. Umi wound her fingers in his hair and turned him back to face her, leaning in closer – he was actually leant back into the desk now, not just against it. She’d never pushed this hard before tonight. And he’d never folded. But now he was suffering his own kind of earthquake. “I can’t sleep.” He admitted, and everyone knew it but this was the first time he’d confessed it aloud. “All I see is the people we’ve lost. Nightmares, every time I drop off, and I know how dangerous nightmares are now.“ 

“You were asleep earlier.” She pointed out. 

He shrugged. “A potion. I’ve been taking too many, but they stop the dreams as well.” She hissed at that, leaning back. “I can’t take another yet, they have to be two days apart. Please, Umi, just let me get on with something useful? I need to have _something_ …” 

Something to stop him from going insane. He was already low enough he wasn’t the help he should have been, and thinking about that made him spiral further. 

But instead of stepping away Umi glared at him, anger flaring back into her beautiful, dirt-smudged face. “What you need is to let go of this for a while! If you can’t do so yourself, I’ll _make_ you!” She reached with both hands and pushed his coronet off, tugging sharply at his hair in places in her rush, and she flung it aside towards the bench where his staff lay. It clattered to the floor instead, but by the time he heard it ringing on the stone Umi had fisted both hands in his hair and was dragging his head down the bare inch to hers. 

The kiss didn’t surprise him as much as it should. 

But his response did. 

Clef gasped at the first press of her lips, nerves screaming to life throughout his body – system jolting awake after months of slow numbness brought on by exhaustion and ever-increasing sleeping draughts. She wasn’t going slow for him, either – the kiss demanded retaliation or submission, and both led to the same route of dragging her closer, winding his hands in her cloak and holding on as heat flared sharply down his spine. 

Umi pressed closer, licked into his mouth, and he moaned and tilted for a better angle to let her in. He leant back further by the moment, inclined over the desk as she pushed him back. 

When she pulled away he blinked his eyes open, breathing hard and shaking. “Umi…” he said, and didn’t know what should come next. 

Her eyes were dark. “Lock the door.” 

“I…”

“Lock the door, Clef.” 

He did as he was told, holding a hand to the door and murmuring the spell to lock and ward it. Umi didn’t move until he was done, then pushed into his space again, forcing away awareness of everything but the strength of her against him, yanking the catch of his mantle open and pushing it from his shoulders, the bulk of his outer robe going with it, dirt trapped between the folding layers. He shuddered, let her do it, but the material caught on his desk behind him and when he heard the slide of paper to the floor Clef grabbed Umi’s shoulders and pushed her away. “Not here,” he whispered, twisting and trying to see how much damage had been done to the piles. 

“We’re not wasting time going somewhere else.” Umi growled. “Your room is _too far_.” 

It was at the end of the corridor, but that was beside the point. “No, I didn’t mean that, I meant not with the desk-“ 

Umi blinked at him, then her mouth curved into a slow, wicked grin, one he didn’t trust at all, and she dragged him away from the desk, then a flurry of motion had him off balance and falling, dizzy and out of control, but her hands were tight on his wrists and when the world stopped moving he was pinned on the floor, hands pushed up just higher than his head, the tiles softened by the folds of his discarded robes. 

“Better?” She asked, knelt astride his hips. There was a rough note to her voice which shuddered through him, but there was a… a real question, too, in the way she paused to let him answer what should have been a statement. He felt the tremors in her legs, as she pressed to him, saw how her eyes had darkened. This wasn’t pity he was being offered, not just a distraction, she wanted this. Him. She wanted him to choose it. 

Clef swallowed, speechless. His fingers curled, and he wanted… she wasn’t even pretending to hold him down hard enough to keep him there, not if he wanted to escape; she would never force this, he knew. If he pushed back, she would let go – she was giving him the space to decide, here and now, if this was actually a distraction he wanted. 

Slowly, he consciously relaxed every muscle, laying still in her grasp. The only movement he made was to tilt his head back as he bared his neck. 

Umi’s breath caught, and he let his eyes close entirely as she folded over him to press her mouth to his, almost… softly, now, gently. And somehow that made his pulse run faster still, the care, the… thoroughness in the way she explored his mouth, her tongue slick and hot against his own, and then she was pulling away to drag her teeth down the line of his exposed throat, and he groaned. 

He felt Umi’s breath stutter over his skin, the sensation amplified by the dampness on his neck. The jolt of arousal which slammed through him at that was a blunt force shattering any embarrassment at the noise he had made, was making. “Keep your hands there.” Umi told him – ordered him – and he obeyed, keeping his hands pressed back against the folds of cloth as she let go. The tiles were hard and solid through the fabric, against his knuckles. Umi’s fingers were cold, and they made him shiver as she pulled the neck of his top lower, lips tracing over his collarbone, and then she was leaning over him again. 

“Hold still a moment.” That was all the warning he got before her magic flooded down over them both. It was like being struck by an icy wave, like falling into the sea; every inch of him was wrapped in the sharp coldness and he shuddered his way through it, world washed out by the sensations coursing over him, though him. 

When it faded, and he opened his eyes, he was mostly expecting them to both be soaked – but the spell had washed away the marks of their day without even dampening them; even the scratches on Umi’s hands were eased, though not gone. Her smile was wicked again, pleased with herself, and though her hands had seemed cold before now they burned in contrast to the memory of that magic as she pulled his top away from his trousers, ran her fingers over bare skin. 

“This needs to come off.” 

It wasn’t phrased as a question, and he took it as another order without actually stopping to think. He concentrated until the layers of cloth flickered away and into the ring he still wore, then shuddered at the cold of the stone through only one layer of fabric. 

“Good.” Umi murmured, and now teasing fingers traced down over his chest, rested against his hips. She leant down almost thoughtfully to press her lips to the hollow over his breastbone, traced a path sideways and licked over one nipple. He shifted, fingers curling into fists against the floor, then she _bit_. His head thumped against the floor again as he pressed up into that, and one leg bent up; Umi was wearing a skirt which fanned out over her legs, a top with long sleeves and a low neck which vanished somewhere under the tabard she wore. The tabard itself was emblazoned with Selece’s symbol, and the outfit was one of the sets of Cephiran clothing he’d seen her in at least a dozen times before, as they rode out to be recognised. 

He’d been absently conscious before of the skin left bare between the top of the long socks she wore and the hem of her skirt; now he was confronted by it. It meant that her bare thighs were pressed to his skin, and moving made him sharply aware that only a few inches and the single layer of underwear she had on were separating them. “ _Umi-_ “ He stuttered, and she pulled her mouth from his chest to grin down at him. 

“There’s no rush. No need to worry. I’ve got you.” She murmured, voice rough, but she reached to unfasten her cloak and then the wide belt which held all the layers of fabric at her waist, pulling it off. It clattered on the floor somewhere to the side of them, but Clef was watching wide-eyed as she unfastened the series of straps holding the tabard about herself and pulled that off too, her hair caught in the fabric then cascading down about her. She bent down to kiss him again, soft barely-there touches which teased hypersensitive nerves. Her hair fell like a curtain about them, brushing ticklish over his chest; he shuddered, scraped his teeth over her lip as she pulled back. She didn’t take the bait. 

His arms stayed pressed to the floor, though he so badly wanted to reach up and pull her back down, almost itching with the need to touch. “Come on, Umi. _Please_.” He asked, as she reared away and fumbled her hair back into a loose knot. 

“Don’t want this getting in the way.” She muttered, and he would have mourned the whispering drag of it over his skin, except now the curve of her neck was left bare. He wanted to press his lips there, lick down over the hollow by her collarbone, lower – to where the soft material of her top clung to the slender curves of her. But even as he thought it, her hands ran back up his arms and encircled his wrists, holding him down. 

His breath caught, again, and he couldn’t help the abortive shift of his hips – there was no friction, though the fabric of her skirt draped back over his groin in a distracting fashion. Umi bit her lip, watching his reaction. He closed his eyes under that scrutiny, heat flushing his cheeks. Then he whimpered as she pushed his hands up above his head, where she could hold them together with one of her own and leave the other free. Those fingers trailed back up over his neck, thumb brushing along his jaw before she licked along it, scraped her teeth over his skin, pressed her mouth to his again. 

Clef strained up into her, opening his mouth and deepening the kiss as far and as fast as he could while his hands were still held back by her touch. He pressed into that contact until she pulled back just too far for him to reach, her breath hot on his lips. Her voice was soft, and husky, and the sound sent sparks winding though him. “Can you keep your hands there, Clef? If I let go again?” 

“ _Yes._ ” He hissed, and then her tongue was tracing spells on his throat as both her hands now explored his chest, swept down to his hips; his skin was dampening with sweat now, and the cloth below was beginning to stick to him. The ground was hard; between that below and the weight of Umi pressing down over him he was anchored firmly in his body, in this one moment, here, now. 

Umi slid further back, and ground her hips against his; sparks cascaded up his spine, and his back left the floor as he rocked against her, the soft noise she made against his neck barely audible under the rasp of his breath. His fingers clenched about his own wrists, still on the floor, and when she moved further still and broke that contact he cried out. 

“I told you. There’s no rush.” Umi whispered, as she took hold of him, and sweat was beginning to trickle between his shoulder blades, make the cloth below stick to him. 

He lost track of time, of everything but the way she touched him, her hands seemingly everywhere, curious, dragging responses from him. Tracing the bones of his ankles, the tender skin at the inside of his elbows. Not shying away from any of him. When she finally rolled the protection down over him he was shaking and going hoarse, but he opened his eyes at that. 

She was still dressed, if only in strange earth underwear. “You were planning this?” He murmured, as she tossed the packet aside – it had writing on which he couldn’t understand, meaning she had brought it from Tokyo with her, despite the similarity to the most common methods here. 

Umi shrugged. “I figured there was no harm in being prepared.” She said, just as quietly, and then she was stepping up, away, to pull off those last layers of clothing. 

When she settled over him again, he wasn’t the only one breathing hard. She bent to kiss him, lingeringly, and reached up to pull his hands apart – to tug his arm down so that their fingers could stay tangled even as she slid down. 

He held himself as still as he could, unable to look away. She went slowly, and the heat was so incredibly _present_ that it was all he could do to not press up. But she was also holding tight to his hand, and he swept his thumb back and forth, watched her bite her lip. “…New.” She admitted, breathlessly. “With someone… else…” 

He took a breath, shifting without meaning to, just slightly, and her eyes flew open. They locked onto his, and now she reached for his other hand as well, bent forwards as their hips met to kiss him open-mouthed and urgent. 

Clef let himself go, lost in the shift and the heat and the rhythm of them, together, nothing but need left – need and their hands, her hands, as she braced herself on his shoulders. “You can move – Clef, you can-“ she gasped out, against his ear, and he wrapped his arms about her and held on as tight as he could. His breath was stuttering, vision sparking into static, nothing existing except this moment and the two of them who were so real they were overwhelming. 

“I can’t – Umi, I – _please!_ ” He gasped, cried out, and her hands tightened on his shoulders as she dipped her head. 

“ _Let go, Clef._ ” She whispered against his ear, her breath hot on his skin. “Let go for me, I’ve got you-“ And she curled a fraction further, his hands skidding on the sweat-slick line of her back as she bit him again, teeth closing on the tendons of his neck enough to sting, pain sharpening every sensation for a moment which grew and exploded through his body. 

It took some time to remember how to breath. 

Umi was still braced above him when he forced his eyes open, every line of her taut. Clef shifted, and they both shivered a little, over-sensitive; but the noise Umi made was still full of tension. He reached out without thinking, one hand gathering in her hair to pull her down and kiss her, open-mouthed and languid, the other sliding between them. She moaned softly when he urged her to slide up, and again when he slid his fingers into the slick heat of her, the heel of his hand there for her to grind down on as he crooked his fingers; it wasn’t long until she shuddered against him with a cry he swallowed from her mouth. 

They lay tangled together for several long quiet moments, and he let himself drift until Umi stirred – but when he went to move, she pushed him back down again, with a look that drew a short bitten-off sound from him even though his body was far too well satisfied to respond as it wanted to. And somehow it was just as intimate to lie back and let her clean up; he was still shaking, seemed unable to stop the faint trembling as her hands ran over him. 

Clef shut his eyes. The world outside of this little bubble Umi had carved out for them wanted to press back over him, along with the air which was growing uncomfortably cold on his damp skin. But before he could bring himself to move Umi was back, laying down with him again, wrapping them both in the cloak she had discarded earlier. She was warm; and when he turned to bury his face against the curve of her neck, she wrapped her arms about him and held him steady. The shivering subsided, slowly, replaced by a heavy lethargy, and Umi showed no signs of letting him go. 

Blearily, as he drifted into sleep, he hoped the tower hadn’t _actually_ rocked under them in the middle of that. 

oOo

epilogue

oOo

Ferio looked up at the kitchen ceiling sharply as a rumble came down through the walls, a shivering which set the pots and pans swinging where a handful of people were scrounging something like supper, having missed eating earlier. “Was that an aftershock?” He demanded, turning to Fuu, snapping out of the half drowse he’d been stirring soup in. “Do we need to –“ 

But Fuu glanced up at the ceiling, her eyes going distant the way they always seemed to do when she reached for Cephiro, and then she blushed bright red and looked at the floor in a rush, shaking her head. “That – no, um. No.” 

Hikaru was blinking, too, glancing up. She didn’t seem as phased as Fuu – but she was blushing a little, too, and that took quite a lot. Ferio blinked. What could possibly… 

LaFarga charged into the room, holding soup bowls in front of him like a weapon of some kind, looking for both the knights; Caldina dashed in after him with a loaf of pawasute. “Another quake?” She asked, and Fuu blushed brighter, shaking her head – even as the castle seemed to tremble about them again. “…Then what the heck _was_ that?” 

“Umi getting her way finally.” Hikaru said, with a laugh, eyes brighter than they had been in days even with the flush on her cheeks, and Ferio span to stare at Fuu. Surely they didn’t mean… but Fuu wasn’t meeting his eyes, and he found himself staring at the ceiling too. 

“Huh. Well, I guess that’s one way to get him to relax.” 

“You don’t mean – _oh_.” Caldina grinned, suddenly, dropping the pawasute to the table. “Well, I know she was asking a couple of weeks back about how things worked about here – safety and all that – I didn’t realise she had a _plan_.” 

“I don’t think Clef did, either.” Fuu muttered, just loud enough that Ferio and no one else heard her. Ferio choked, and had to hand over the ladle before he scalded himself or burnt the soup. He sat down at the table and laughed, instead, while everyone else grinned or tried not to. 

It was the most comfortable moment he remembered in months, and the relaxation lingered as they sat about the kitchen table to eat. He’d have to remember to thank Umi, some time. 

…Preferably from a safe distance. 

oOo

end

oOo

**Author's Note:**

> No physical restraints used, no safewords negotiated – though I am fairly certain Umi plans on doing so if this actually WORKS, heh, but it would take a level of conversation she is fairly certain would get Clef refusing because it would give him time to overthink – consent given non-verbally but both characters are very clear on it being there.
> 
> Clef's pretty much got a case of situational stress-and-insomnia related case of depression here (probably fairly mild apart from the insomnia exacerbating everything), and yes one instance of sex is not going to fix it! But it can help break cyclical thoughts for a while and it's a thing to practice mindfulness on even accidentally, and if he can accept Umi as a safe place and relax about her then that can help and basically I am really really sorry Clef? Um.


End file.
